Henry Epp

Morning Edition Host/Reporter

Henry Epp

Joyce Skowyra
/ NEPR

Henry has hosted Morning Edition on New England Public Radio since 2014. He began working with the station as an intern in 2011, and later became a reporter and frequent fill-in host of All Things Considered. Henry’s reporting has focused on a variety of topics, including state and local politics, economic development, energy and the arts. His feature stories have received two awards from Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI). Henry is a graduate of Hampshire College, and occasionally plays the baritone saxophone.

Ways to Connect

At least two communities in western Massachusetts could lose federal funding from the Department of Justice. That's if the department follows through on its pledge to cut grant money from cities that do not comply with federal immigration requests to detain individuals suspected of being in the country illegally.

Last week, both Amherst and Northampton landed on a federal list of so-called "sanctuary cities."

Last November, Massachusetts voters legalized recreational marijuana. There's a long way to go before pot shops open in the state, but lawmakers move one step closer Monday as the legislature's new marijuana committee holds its first public hearing at the State House.

For more, we spoke to Matt Murphy, a reporter with the State House News Service. He said the list of state officials who will testify includes Treasurer Deb Goldberg, Attorney General Maura Healey and Gaming Commission Chair Steve Crosby.

Over the next few months, workers at the Springfield Armory will be digging a lot of dirt. They’re restructuring parts of the armory’s grounds to recreate the landscape of the National Historic Site to what it looked like in the 1950s. They’ll even plant specific trees to match that era, which was the last time the armory was really in business. It built and developed weapons for the U.S. military.

At the Armory grounds, Superintendent James Woolsey explained how crews have begun turning a field into a sloping hill.

Key budget leaders in the Massachusetts House have said no new “broad-based” taxes are needed for the next state budget, even though tax revenues for the current fiscal year keep coming up short.

Like most Mondays, we checked in with Matt Murphy, a reporter for the State House News Service in Boston. He explained when lawmakers say they’re not raising “broad-based” taxes, that doesn’t mean no new taxes at all.

For decades, the three counties of Massachusetts along the Connecticut River -- Franklin, Hampshire and Hampden -- have been collectively known as the Pioneer Valley, but some boosters of the region decided the moniker is old-fashioned and confusing. So the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts spent $80,000 to hire a consultant from Oklahoma to re-brand this region. The result: "West Mass." It was launched with a two-minute video.